Porphyrion
by TazoClarity
Summary: The queen doesn't hear her name called over the carnage and her own distracted mind, but she feels his golden hand on her bloodied skin and she wants to crawl out of it, wants to scream at him not to touch her. But she doesn't.


A/N: Reading Greek myths...this story always baffled me. Why Zeus chose to do _this_ before he slay the giant. I guess I'm trying to puzzle it out by writing about it? Zeus and Hera are just loaded with angst...I'd love to do stories about any myth relating to them (preferably the ones that don't involving cheating. Those are a bit boring and easy...anyway...) Enjoy!

They celebrate their victory. Blood is everywhere, on the torn clothes she pins to herself until she remembers that she is a goddess and she can right it herself. But the command is stillborn, the blood trickles down her white arms and she can no longer summon her mettle. She wishes to still her aching, shaking hands…but her consent is never a question. Never a question.

Heracles did not hesitate, his arrow was true, savage even. They, Heracles and her husband, struck him down as his large, unstoppable hands flung her against a wall and roamed her crudely. Despite it all, Heracles is the greatest demigod champion she has. She admits this to herself grudgingly, even though he is more dutiful than awed, unlike her favorite mortal hero Jason. She admits this, admits it to take her mind away.

The fighting continues and she lifts her golden sword, but nothing will work and she distracts herself with useless thoughts, never noticing that both Zeus and his bastard son have kept eyes on her since they felled Porphyrion. Zeus abandons the fight and Heracles averts his eyes and returns to it, unsure how to mark the behavior of his most terrible and beautiful stepmother, but knowing war so well that it requires no thought.

The queen doesn't hear her name called over the carnage and her own distracted mind, but she feels his golden hand on her bloodied skin and she wants to crawl out of it, wants to scream at him not to touch her. But she doesn't.

No one notices king and queen standing unguarded in the midst of the movement and apart from it, but she marvels at the continuing fighting because she doesn't wish to look at her lord husband, and for a moment her world obeys, until his touch becomes frantic and he rubs her shoulders, skating up her neck until both his powerful hands frame her face and his brow is dark and wary of whatever is upon it.

She doesn't ever scream at him not to touch her, but then his mouth opens and she presses the tremor of her hand to the offensive motion, with an intimacy she doesn't mean to deliver right now. She feels his thumbs stroking the bones of her cheeks with a frantic energy. "I beg you," is all she can manage, but Zeus seems to be in a dull sort of panic (normal for an immortal being, as there is never much reason to panic) at her face or perhaps the words…because she doesn't plead often, even when he hung her from the sky and she cried out all night. Mercy never came to her lips, and so it never entered her husband's mind.

But now, her face pushed into his shoulder and his arms viced around her, he seems to know just what she wants him to do and when she next opens her eyes, they are home on Olympus and she cringes away once she doesn't need to be in his arms anymore. And Hestia is there, her touch soothing and the cinnamon flames of her eyes lessening her younger sister's turmoil. Without asking, she mends and cleans Hera's robes and minor wounds with a quick, soft touch and clasps her in a sincere embrace.

"You aren't harmed?" The buzzing in the queen's head dampens just enough and she says, "no," before moving out of her sister's arms. She now knows she wants them all to stop touching her. She sees Hestia eyeing Zeus over her shoulder, and her stomach plummets as her older sister pats her hands, having done her duty.

"Rest, sweet sister. The worst of the day is done. Let our home return your vigor."

Zeus' hands are on her shoulders and she wants to thrown them off, but she feels a dread in the pit of her stomach that it makes no difference. Her husband takes what he wants, if he lays hands on her, she cannot resist him. And if he turns a giant from raising a fist to her to—

No.

 _Why? Why? Why?_

"Are you not needed in the battle, Zeus?" Her voice is perfect, composed.

"Come," is all he says, because he would not admit that she is worrying him and he is concerned…he hasn't admitted such a thing for centuries. He leads her to her rooms, and she is aware of nothing but the hand on the small of her back and the pounding of her heart. She wants to tell him to stop touching her, but she can't because he will then _know_. Her lord husband dismisses the nymphs roaming her apartment with a wave and they scatter. But she wants him to go badly because she feels sick and she doesn't want him to see her like this. She wants peace and solitude…

And at the same time, she can feel a coil of fury in the pit of her stomach, directed towards the man who stands before her, a different kind of fury than what she usually feels, a horrified and perverse curiosity that she barely understands herself. She turns toward him and he is still bloody, battle-lust still upon his face, stayed by the confusion in his eyes toward her. And she clenches her fists around their unsteadiness. And thinks that she is a queen and she must not come undone, here with him.

"Hera."

She shakes her head, wanting to clear it. "You will be missed."

Maybe he just wants permission to go, and once she gives it, he will disappear and she will have her room and her body to herself. But he doesn't want that and she knows him better than any other, knows that he isn't leaving because he can see her teetering on the precipice of madness and she can't compose herself well enough to hide it. Is it a comforting thought to be unable to die? She rubs her arms and she doesn't think so.

"Hera." This time, his voice is gentle, but insistent. And then his hand comes up to lift her chin so she will expose herself and she can't stand it. She slaps it viciously.

"NO."

He pales, completely flummoxed and fighting outrage. She can tell by the way his fists clench and unclench in a rhythm. She knows what he's thinking and she wishes she could have taken it back, but why is he _here_ and why can't he just go?

She tries again, more to her own liking this time. "I wish to be alone."

She hears it, the slight rumble of thunder that trails after her words, his eyes sparking to life until they're stormy and not the perfect blue of his calm. "And I do not wish it."

She says nothing to that, what is she meant to say? Why does what she say never actually matter? And as they stand there, she waits him out, growing colder and wishing to bury herself in the sheets of her bed, knowing that he cannot endure a long silence and that perhaps they can fight and he will rage and abandon her.

"I saved you, did I not?" he fairly sputters, reaching for her again as she steps back, her movements to shaken to be graceful. "I let no harm come to you."

"Nothing you don't inflict yourself?" she counters, unable to help herself. She rubs her arms and says it with a nonchalance that will enflame him. The thunder currents underneath the clouds warningly.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" he growls, dropping his arms.

"You know what I mean!" she snaps. "Don't you have a war to win?!"

"Athena and Ares can take care of it!" he roars, but not as loudly as he could have. "Don't change the subject!"

"We are not talking about anything!" Hera says incredulously, feeling a little of her unease disappear. She could be angry and perhaps she could ignore whatever was still coiled there in the pit of her. "I want you to _go_!"

"I am the King! I don't need to follow your dictates!" This time, thunder and lightning ripped across the sky above them.

"You've made that perfectly clear from the beginning," Hera rejoins, rubbing her head. She wanted to sleep, but he wouldn't leave and the thought of disrobing before _anyone_ was enough to turn her stomach. He was charging the air around them and she briefly hoped that he wouldn't cause it to rain. "What do you require of me, Zeus? My king? What is so pressing to you that a war must be abandoned?"

He flounders here, wanting to understand her. This wasn't about other women or illegitimate children. It wasn't about coups or prophecies. Her ire was directed at him and he didn't know why. He shrugs one muscular arm helplessly. "You're angry."

"I'm tired."

He grits his teeth, knowing that he wasn't imagining anything. "You won't allow me to touch you."

"And where does that commonly lead, Zeus?" It is the first thing that comes to her mind, because she is thinking of her husband, and sex, and betrayal. And she doesn't worry to bite her tongue if he would just _go_.

"You think that I-? Enough." He, for once, seems to realize that she was attempting to outrage him. He backs her onto the grand bed behind her and she sits on it, unconsciously trying to make herself small. This wasn't right.

"What is the matter, Hera? I demand that you tell me."

Very and suddenly aware of his size, he gently sets himself on the bed next to her, careful not to touch her for the moment. He is truly unable to articulate how much her behavior was disturbing him, but he is impatient to understand it. So he pushes down the anger that threatened to flare and remembered her frightened face on the ground. He hadn't seen her expression while that abomination had her against the rock, he only heard her scream of outrage as it tore her clothes from her form, the clothes she wore now like new.

He hadn't thought about it, merely followed the murderous impulse where it led. His bolt was intended to leave nothing more than a stain in its wake. He needed to be content knowing that the enemy who dared lay hands on the queen of the gods was now suffering eternal torment in Tartarus. He wondered what she would think if she knew the affect her danger had on him, the unstoppable instinct to obliterate the threat to her, whatever it was… and while he had slept with hundreds of other women, that remain unchanged. _She_ remained unchanged to him. Everything else was different.

He didn't like seeing this, seeing her fearful. And he couldn't leave until he knew that _she_ knew she was protected. She was his _wife_ and if he couldn't ensure that... If she would talk to him…

"You know," he begins cautiously, "that I wouldn't have let…"

She exhales and closes her eyes and he is startled to see that she looks as if she is about to cry. "I am the master of the sky. I wouldn't have let that monster do anything to you," he says coldly and brutally, and his eyes take on a faraway look, flashing again to the memory of her scream and her hands gripping for purchase against the cliff-side, looking for her sword.

" _Rape me, you mean_."

Her words are flat and when he looks over at her, her eyes are open and bright and he instinctively stands at the sight of her, feeling the blood drain from his face. Finally, she looks at him willingly with her famously big, wet eyes and their uniquely luminescent color. Like the feathers of those peacocks she allowed to wander her gardens… They flash.

"He wasn't going to kill me, Zeus. You're correct. You made sure of that."

He was missing something here and the frustration was building. Then, she sees a revelatory look cross his face as an idea crosses his mind. Of course, she knows that he still doesn't know what she means.

"Was I to let you and Heracles fight Porphyrion yourselves? Did you want to have that fight out yourself? Is _that_ what all of this fussing was about?" He towers over her, but it doesn't frighten her one whit. She gets to her feet again, auburn hair tumbling around her shoulders, already in disarray from the war from when she was cornered and her veil was shaken from her head. Her eyes have taken on that exasperated coldness they get when she feels she is making an obvious point that he is failing to understand.

"He was _going_ to fight me at that point. He intended to kill me. He wasn't overwhelmed by lust at that point, so much so that he forgot he was in the middle of a war and attempted to violate me in the middle of a battlefield. _You_ did that." Each word is bitten with something hard and angry, and she jabs a finger into his chest. "And tell me, husband, _why_? What was your twisted motive this time?" She wants to continue, her anger just beginning to flourish, but she is so tired and she is choking on the words…because she knows, she _knows_ that no answer is adequate, if he even cares to give one…

And what is worse is that she isn't sure he _would_ care…

He opens his mouth, closes it again. Stares at her with perfect sky-blue eyes that have been caught out. And she watches as he reaches out for his memory, as if to understand _why_ himself… But he doesn't see the betrayal for what it is, and she can't bring herself to call it one…

Why must he threaten her with rape to purchase her loyalty?

But then she remembers the power of his hands and perhaps she knows now…Zeus will never cease testing her loyalty, even as he doesn't realize it.

And his eyes fall on hers now and they are surprisingly, heartbreakingly tender. "I didn't think of it, I just acted," he says, his voice full of something that weakens her anger…honesty. "I don't know."

She wonders if it will ever stop devastating her…that he fell in love with her.

She doesn't know.


End file.
